Democrats push antitrust
Cameron ‘7-19 [Peter; July 19; Managing editor of the Badger Project; The Badger Project; “With bipartisan wind at its back, Biden Admin’s aggressive antitrust action could bring lower prices, better products, experts say. But it may take years.” https://themonroetimes.com/local-news/with-bipartisan-wind-at-its-back-biden-admins-aggressive-antitrust-action-could-bring-lower-prices-better-products-experts-say-but-it-may-take-years]
Lower prices on everything from meat to medication to airfare could be coming if a political movement to free up economic markets continues pushing forward.
Unlike recent administrations from both parties, the Biden Administration has taken an aggressive approach on antitrust, which includes the regulation of anticompetitive business practices, challenging large corporate mergers and enforcing laws aimed at keeping economic markets competitive.
The results, experts believe, may be lower prices, more consumer choices and better products. But those benefits may take years to arrive.
One of the clearest indications of that work to free up markets is the 50 legal challenges to corporate mergers the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice’s antitrust division filed in 2022, the most recent year for which that data is available, according to a recent report from Bloomberg. That’s the most in decades.
The push for more marketplace competition is not only coming from Democrats. Hard-right GOP politicians such as Sen. Josh Hawley, vice presidential candidate and Sen. J.D. Vance and U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz have sided against big business on some antitrust issues, bucking some in their own party, and some Democrats as well.
“There is a movement, and it’s a bipartisan movement, towards doing more antitrust cases, full stop,” said Gwendolyn Lindsay Cooley, the former assistant attorney general for antitrust at the Wisconsin Department of Justice. “Particularly against Big Tech.”
Congress has generally been unwilling, or unable, to update antitrust laws, especially those pertaining to enormously influential, and enormously profitable, big tech companies such as Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google.